5/9/10

We're going to go to Master Sheng Yen's book entitled Dharma Drum: The Life and Heart of Chan Practice, to the chapter entitled "Daily Living."

Our first vow, "I vow to deliver innumerable sentient beings" means that we put others before ourselves. That's the heart of our practice, to help others. If we help other people, essentially our problems are very much minimized. That is the essence of the practice, because by putting others before yourself, you have less of a self to be thinking about, i.e. your problems, how important you are, or the amount of time you're giving away. When you start putting a value on your time or who you are, you have a very skewed and selfish way of looking at life.

I remember when I was a young law student, there was a very well-known immigration attorney who came to help us and teach us. For some reason, a bit of his arrogance came up and he said, 'You know about my being here, I normally charge $350 an hour.' That's a lot of money even now, but back when I was a young law student it was really a lot of money. I remember thinking that was so unfortunate. I felt sad that he thought this way, that he had to calculate his time based on monetary units. It's very sad because when we do that, we start thinking about our self-importance. It would drive you crazy - can you imagine if you have $350 an hour in your mind all the time? '$350 to brush my teeth? I just spent so much time driving here and there, etc.' You would have a very uncomfortable life.

We put a value on our lives this way, don't we? It may not be a monetary value, but we put a value on things and activities. 'I'd rather do this. No, I'm not going to help you move' or 'I won't get off the couch to take out the garbage' or whatever it is that's on our list of things to do. So we look at life a little bit differently. If was going to count the people here and charge you the rate I charge as an attorney, I'd be very wealthy, but I'd be a miserable person and wouldn't have that many students. So we can't look at the world this way. We have to look at it without separating ourselves from others. This is our practice, to harmonize and join with others in what you could call a universal mind or a universal heart. When The Chinese talk about mind in this way they use a combination of heart and mind. Using heart and mind means that it's not just cogitating or thinking, it's coming from the heart. Thinking from the heart changes the way we look at things.

So, that's a kind of preface to this particular chapter and the book in general. The chapter begins:

"The study and practice of Chan Buddhism develops an understanding of certain principles of non-attachment. One principle is that the Chan practitioner does not dwell on his or her learning or accomplishments. If you've written a book, let go of your efforts and forget the contents. The book is done. It's gone. Just forget about it and move on. Another principle is that while you should have money in the bank and money in your pocket, should have no money in your head." Actually, I hadn't read this part before I started talking about that immigration attorney, but I wish he had read it.

"Both principles emphasize the importance of maintaining an empty mind. Some people believe the opposite: they obsess about their past efforts and accomplishments; or their minds are filled with money, but their pockets are turned inside out and their bank accounts register a zero balance." And more importantly, their moral compass is lost and their account, in terms of feelings and things, is also a zero balance. "If I'm going to give a lecture and the topic is Chan, then there's no need for preparation. If I am to speak about my scholarly research, however, then I prefer to have advance warning; learned words have limitations but in certain situations they are unavoidable. True Chan teaching does not rely on words, but on practice and direct experience."

I want to tell you two stories. One time when I finished a retreat, Master Sheng Yen had a book like this one here. I asked him, 'What do you think of this fellow in the picture on the back of the book?' He looked at it and said, 'Him? I don't know him.' It was a way of saying okay maybe that book was done by me, but there's no reason for me to lay claim to it, to the photograph, or any kind of pride attached to the accomplishment of writing a book. This is a man who wrote literally hundreds of books, but there was no attachment there.

He says, "True Chan teaching does not rely on words but on practice and direct experience." Recently my eldest son has been taking more of an interest in these matters we're talking about today and he was telling me about going to Knott's Berry Farm. Do you know that game called Roller Coaster Tycoon where you play the person who sets up the whole thing and you can move people here and there? They're just moving and moving. Well, my son said it was really strange – at the Farm he just stopped and started looking at the people and in that moment he said, 'This looks just like Roller Coaster Tycoon.' It was like an illusion. I started talking to him about that and telling him that this was a direct experience. He didn't have the idea of self; he was just looking at things as they were in that moment. It was a very shallow realization but nevertheless something important, because all of a sudden he got a peek at the illusory nature of the world. Then I gave him his next lesson in the illusoriness of the world by pulling out a copy of the Shurangama Sutra. I proceeded to read to him the first volume which talks about mind. When we finished I just looked over at him and he said, 'That was that was pretty incredible.' Then my wife came in and she said, 'You've been talking,' and I said, 'Yes, since I got home.' She said, 'You've been talking for four hours?' My son said, "What?" He thought it was maybe a half an hour, he didn't realize we'd been talking for four hours.

It's kind of an illusion, like when the Buddha tricked his brother to come to the Jeta Grove to practice. He moved backwards every time his brother put his bowl down to give him offerings of food, until they went all the way down to the Jeta Grove. With my son, it was destroying the illusion of time. If he had thought we'd been talking for four hours, he would have said, 'This is too long talk about this,' but his mind was very stable and he was interested in what was being said. His mind was simply looking into mind. There was no time at all, no time for him, no time for me, so in the blink of an eye, the time passed. He didn't realize we'd completed the whole book. But it was very helpful to him.

This is the direct experience that I'm talking about. It opens up a crack in our ideas of time and reality that keep this illusory self ticking. We're kind of measuring things, we have an anchor. For instance, from when I bow until it's time to leave, you know that's a certain amount of time, or my talk might be a certain length of time. When you go to work, you know you're working for eight hours, or whatever it is. Wherever you go you have this idea of measurement, but when you abandoned those types of measurements or judgements of good or bad etc., the world is still there - it's just perfectly there because you're not doing anything.

When we have the self, instead of just accepting this incredible tapestry of the world, we take crayolas to it and start marking it up and messing it up and coloring it. We go, 'Oh, this person, I don't like him,' so we draw horns on him. 'This person I like,' and we put a big heart around him, or for another person you put a gun there, or a big rat trap for someone you really don't like. This is what we do to the world, but none of that stuff is really there; we put it there, we create all those illusions. But when we're watching the world, we realize it's like the Roller Coaster Tycoon, running perfectly in accordance with causes and conditions and we know exactly why everything should be there.

So, for instance, while I was talking to my son, my other son called. They were coming back and I had asked him to stop at the market to buy some cream for a dish I was going to prepare. The phone rang and my son said, 'Dad.' And I said, 'Get the quart,' and that was it. 'Okay'. When your mind is very calm, you are totally aware in that moment exactly why that person is calling and what's happening. It's just clear. My other son just smiled. He understood in that moment why was easy for me to understand why my other son was calling, even though he had left several hours before. It's an interesting thing; it's not any special skill. Quite the contrary, it's just simply quieting the mind to observe everything perfectly, so that you can see things as they are, harmonize your physical body with the things around you, and thereby get the most production out of this body.

Most the time we're not very good achievers with our body. We don't really get a lot of things done, because we're constantly thinking of other things to do, or if we're doing things, we're doing them in a confused manner. When the mind is very calm, it's very easy to do things. You simply are directly experiencing what life is, moment to moment. But if you start thinking, 'Oh, I don't want to do that,' what happens? It's the funniest thing, my youngest son, like a lot of kids, was a perfect example of this. They expend so much energy dispersing their toys throughout the room, but if you ask them to pick up the toys, all of a sudden that same amount of energy to pick them up is too hard, too much work. It doesn't make any sense, does it? The amount of energy that it took to spread them out is the same amount energy that it takes to put them back into the container, whether it's little people or cars or blocks or whatever. But they always say, 'Oh no, I can't do that.

That's the way we look at things all the time. We say, 'Oh, I gotta clean my clothes.' Yes, you have to clean your clothes; you can't be walking around with stinky clothes, and if you're not going to do it, who will? 'Oh, I gotta clean my bowl.' Of course you clean your bowl; you just ate, it's natural. If you clean your bowl now, it won't sit there in the sink and attract cockroaches, not that you have cockroaches in your house, but if you don't clean your bowl too often, you might.

So, you do everything just in accordance with what needs to be done and you're cool about it. In that moment, you're resting and you're directly experiencing life, and instead of being the proverbial ostrich that hides its head in the sand, your head is perfectly aware of what's going on. Sometimes you may even know what the people are going to say next, or what they have on their mind, or who's going to ring the doorbell. It's not any special skill, it's just paying attention. When we're not paying attention to things, we miss everything and we don't understand why people get angry, or why they do this or that.

I teach all over North America and have students in Asia as well and wherever I go, there's one thing that astounds me. People will call me up and say, 'I've got a problem with my husband.' What's wrong with him? 'Oh, he's angry, always angry.' Well, how long has he been angry like that? 'Since we were married.' It should be natural, then, for that person to expect the husband to be angry. It's unnatural to expect the husband to wake up with the bluebird of happiness waking up right next to him. We have to see the world as it is, see how we can change it and how we can't change it, and how we can harmonize with things.

But what we shouldn't do is try to force our world on other people and that's the problem we have: men forcing their world on women, women forcing their world on men, countries, cultures and religions forcing their ideas on others. But if we just simply understand each other and understand why people think what they think, do what they do, and believe what they believe, that's enough. It makes the world a lot easier when you really see things, but as soon as we start to discriminate, it changes interactions between people.

An angry person stinks up the room. They never see that but if they can calm their mind, they'll be aware of how they are perfuming the environment with Bija seeds, to borrow a term from the Yogachara school of Buddhism, where they talk about perfuming thoughts and perfuming actions. When we only just see something in mind, it just is what it is, but, for example, if we're looking at a Krispy Kreme donut, we see it but then we go, 'Wow that's a big beautiful donut.' Then what happens? We develop a craving for it, an attachment to it, but after you eat 12 of them and get very sick, next time I say, 'Hey, look at that donut,' You'll say, 'Oh, get that thing out of my sight, that's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.' So, we are perfuming the environment with our thoughts. It's really neither good nor bad; it's just what it is. If you just see it as a donut, it's just a donut. In fact, it's not a donut, It's just an appearance that we call "donut," just in case we ever need to say, 'Hey, can you pass me a donut' or 'I want to buy a donut,' instead of, 'Get me one of those things…' So, we use the language, but we're not attached to it, and just because we have a name for something doesn't mean it's real. We're aware of it, we're not running away from it, we're not doing anything except keeping our mind very very calm.

"When we say that Chan does not rely on words, we mean that Chan does not depend on what has been spoken or written in the past. If we recognize that there is no need to believe the words of Sakyamuni Buddha, we can approach Chan unencumbered by what we have heard and what we have read. Other religions and schools of philosophy wrestle with considerable verbiage. Chan advocates throwing everything away."

So, instead of trying to hold on to things and say, 'this is the heart of it,' we understand that the fundamentals of the practice are just fundamentals; they are not the practice itself. It is our application of the practice that allows us to enter into Chan. The word Chan is just the Chinese word for the Sanskrit word dhyana, which means meditation practice. Zen is the Japanese word for Chan, so the mystique of Zen or Chan is now gone. It just means according your mind to the circumstances that are appearing in mind at that time, without attachment. That's all Chan is: just bringing your mind to this moment without attaching to anything. What does that mean? It simply means disregarding impressions of things as likes or dislikes. When that happens, one can enter into Chan. These words themselves will not get you there. If they did, wow, that would be good, and I wouldn't have any students next week. It doesn't happen that way.

Every once in a while somebody, with the help of words and because of their practice of looking in their direct experience, can see this. Hui Neng, the sixth patriarch of the Chan school was hiding in the forest because people were trying to get him. He had been given a robe and a bowl by the fifth patriarch. When he heard someone coming, he hid. All his pursuer saw when he got there was the robe and the bowl. He said, 'I don't come for the robe and bowl, I come for instruction.' Hui Neng came out of the trees and said, 'What is it that you seek?' The man said, 'I want my mind to be quieted.' Hui Neng said, 'Without thinking of good mind or bad mind what mind is that?' What mind is that?

Student: The non-arising mind?

Gilbert: OK, and this non-arising mind is what?

Student: Just mind or no mind.

Gilbert: We could say 'no mind' or we could say 'just mind,' it means the same thing. It is your fundamental nature. Your fundamental nature is the capacity of mind to be aware of all things. That which is now perceiving things to be good, or perceiving things to be bad, is your arising mind. It arises in accordance with causes and conditions and as a result, it's not really your fundamental mind. It's not separate from it because it arises from that fundamental mind, but it should not be mistaken to be your mind. It is your ego. Your ego actually arises out of the quieted mind in accordance with causes and condition. So, for instance, when we say, 'This is a Krispy Kreme donut,' if one's mind is still, it's just a donut. But out of causes and conditions, when Krispy Kreme donut appears in mind, one will develop some kind of a reaction to it, but that reaction was not there a moment before. That reaction rises to meet the conditions that are forming in mind; you develop a craving for it. That craving wasn't there a moment ago, it's simply meeting these conditions and coming right out of this non-arising mind.

It's important to know this because then you spot the ego as it arises. It's interesting - when you go on a longer retreat, seven-days or more, you can begin to spot the ego arising. One's mind is so quiet, and because you're on your method, you see these thoughts arising and you realize, 'That's not me! That's just something coming out.' That helps you, because then, when you're walking around in your everyday activities, you're not so quick to claim those impressions to be yourself, and you're less likely to make a mistake, like eating two boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts.

"Recently I spoke about this principle of letting go and leaving behind. Someone said, 'That sounds scary, to throw away your whole past and totally discard everything you know.' I am not really advocating a return to a vegetable state in which your head resembles a dry pumpkin. We must learn, but we should not cling to what we've learned. We do not want learning in our heads when we practice."

This is the idea that we are acquiring knowledge. A while ago a person emailed me and said 'we need to sit down and have a long chat and talk about the Dharma.' Later he came to my class and listened and you could tell he was grading me. This person had attached to learning and really was not applying the practice; he had no idea what the practice was. It was a case of someone simply learning things so they could spout off and show people how wise or great they were. Ultimately I told him that the learning he was talking about was all poop. (I used l little harder word to him; the situation required some shock value, and he was shocked. He said, 'I can't believe you said that the teaching of all these great masters is poop.' I said, 'It's not poop to me, it's poop to you, because you're clinging to it, and if you cling to it you will never make that treasury your own. You're only acquiring things, like a librarian.' This person chose to move on and acquire more knowledge. Hopefully one day he will realize that what I was telling him will be beneficial.

Even Master Sheng Yen had people who would come to him and say, 'You know, Master, I've been learning with this other master. We can go together and you can learn from him too.' Master Sheng Yen said, 'It's okay, you go and learn wherever you want. I'll just stay here.' Later that person came back and said, 'He didn't know any more than you do, so I guess I'll just stay here.' This is discriminating and thinking that a master is going to deliver you, or tell you the secret of life, but it's not that way. You have to apply it. If you apply it in your daily life, the master is only a compass, pointing the way in which you should practice. You have to do the practice yourself. Once you practice and bring yourself to the present moment, you're according practice directly with the present moment. After a while there's no practice, the mind is simply resting in this moment.

"I'm always busy. Nevertheless, I am never disturbed by my obligations or responsibilities. People ask me how I manage to deal with my work. There is nothing that I wish to do or not do for personal gain or for preservation. I do what I have to do with all my heart. I do not do what is not permitted me, what is unnecessary, and what I am unable to do."

These are very incredible words. He is telling you how to practice, but can we do it? It's not easy when we put this into practice. Nevertheless, we should try to do it. Listen to what he says, this is Chan, pure Chan, very simple. First, I have to tell you that I spent a good majority of my life looking for the Answer, or you could say, the Way. I studied with many different masters of different disciplines and I became very accomplished in different types of skills, but I was still looking for something. Then one day I heard Master Sheng Yen speak, and he was speaking like this, so simply, and I was floored, literally floored, like if I heard Mozart after hearing Muzak my whole life. I just realized that what he was saying was so incredibly simple, but in another way how profound and how beautiful it was. Listen to this - this is pretty good stuff:

"I'm always busy, but I'm never disturbed by my obligations or responsibilities."

I tell my kids they have to take out the trash. 'Oh, no! I don't wanna take out the trash.' Well, who put it there, someone must have filled up that can. When you get disturbed by it, what happens? The walk to the trash can is like the Death March on Bataan. All of a sudden the kids are moving so slowly, dragging the bag behind them because they have this idea they're being dragged down by responsibilities. Is that how you work at your job? Surely none of you ever work like that, right? When you work like that, the workdays are so long, it's horrible. But when you just put your mind into it, it's not so bad. It's your obligation to do a good job at work. If you don't, you get fired. You need that job for the money, to bring home to your family or to do whatever you need to do. If you are a student you need to do your best because you know your career relies upon that and other people may rely on what you do. As an attorney, people rely on me to do my best. I can't say I do it 100%. I try but I'm still a practitioner. But, you know, there are days when I'm sitting there and want to look out the window, but I've got to reel it in and become a practitioner again. The more you do that, the more your mind settles down and you don't have the idea that play is good, work is bad.

"I tell them I don't put myself in the way of what I do."

Beautiful words: I do not put myself in the way of what I do. If I lecture, Gilbert shouldn't be here talking to you. I try to put him to the side so he doesn't get in the way. If I'm in court, giving a closing argument or opening argument I don't put Gilbert there either, because if I do that, he'll keep asking, 'How am I my doing?' 'Terrible,' or 'we are doing great,' and then you mess everything up. It becomes toil, a task, a problem. So you don't do that; it's very simple. Try that with what you're doing. Don't put yourself in the equation - that's the entry into the practice of Chan.

"There is nothing that that I wish to do or not do for personal gain."

So he's not thinking, 'I really want to do this so that I can be a well-known Chan teacher.' I just get up here because you guys show up. If you show up my mouth moves up and down, not because I want to gain some high level or respect. It has nothing to do with it. You shouldn't put yourself into anything that you do, never try to take credit. When you're that way it's very easy for you to course through the world. When you're not, you suffer a lot.

"I do what I have to do with all my heart."

Now here we are again with the idea of heart rather than mind. The cogitating mind starts to think about things, but when we do it with our heart, then things come out very good. For instance, going back to the example I gave you earlier about me talking to my son: what I did was to put my heart into reading that to him, to introduce it and explain it to him, and he put his heart into listening and in that moment we were joined in Chan. Whatever you do, whether you're listening or speaking or whatever, you put your heart into it. If someone has a problem and they're talking to you, you put your heart into listening to what they're saying. Have you ever had people, for instance on the phone, who, when you say you're not feeling well and can't talk, they start telling you about their problems? They didn't really listen to what you were saying. It's not a matter of seeking pity from someone, it's a matter of listening and communicating.

"I do not do what is not permitted me, what is unnecessary, and what I am unable to do."

So, because he's a monk, he would not take alcohol; it's not permitted - he doesn't have the idea of drinking alcohol. If somebody gave him a Krispy Kreme donut and that was all he could eat, he would eat the donut, if that was permitted, but he wouldn't be thinking that it's necessary to have another donut. Our minds are always clicking, making necessities of everything. He also doesn't do what he's unable to do. This is interesting, what you think that means?

Student: Causes and condition are such that he's not going to try to change something beyond his control.

Gilbert: These restrictions all point to no-self. When we have a self, we think that it's necessary for us to have a beer, or that it's necessary for us to defend ourselves when somebody's yelling at us. The self says we're able to insult anybody whenever we want to, or take something that doesn't belong to us. When we have this kind of a mind, it's very difficult for us to practice.